Alex Hamilton

Random Celebrity

'One of the great pleasures of being a dealer in contemporary art is the close contact one makes with the artists. I have had the privilege in a long career of meeting and working with some extraordinary people. I have noticed that painters can be roughly divided into two groups. The first, and by far the largest, consists of artists who find their style or metier and slowly and methodically develop over the years. The second and smallest group is those artists who fizz with ideas and concepts like a shaken can of cola.

All too often these painters, to continue the metaphor, all gas and no substance but occasionally someone like Alex Hamilton happens. This is my sixth one man show of Hamilton's and I am always astonished at the direction he takes and the obsessive nature of his research and collection of source material. He combines this with a meticulous technique to create haunting and lovely paintings that celebrate that part of the human psyche that seeks through dance, story telling, food, ritual or mechanical invention to transcend the corporeal and attain the ineffable.'

Trent Read

Look out for his forthcoming exhibition, Collected Celebrity, opening on 19 February 2010.

View Alex's work at : http://www.finearts.co.za

Aides Memoires by Gregory Kerr

Dr Gregory Kerr, a most learned academic and prominant contemporary artist, speaks about his current exhibition, Aides Memoires, at Knysna Fine Art.

'The title, Aides Memoires, refers to the fact that small format drawing is often used as a sketch for a larger, more ‘significant’ work to follow. In my case, the pastels not only generate their own, unique completion, but also serve to supply (as opposed to record) memory. Much of the imagery arises from accidents, oddities, quirks on the plates and the grounds I develop prior to working the final image. In this sense the pastels often achieve a completion and integrity that are sometimes very hard-won in the oils.

I am primarily an oil painter, but since my student days I have been enchanted by the directness, luminosity and painterly characteristics of pastel used with bravura. I knew that Edgar Degas had used monotype as a means for creating rich and sometimes idiosyncratic textured and tonal grounds for his famous works. After experimenting with a small universal press in 2000, in 2001 I acquired an etching press and started to use this relatively formal and technical process in the development of more dedicated work in the medium. I tend to balance oil painting, drawing and pastel work in equal measures in my studio practice.


In the present series, the interest is primarily on the possibilities for colour and characterization that arise from the various subjects. I have enjoyed exploring the idea of the mysterious relationship between individuals – sometimes idiosyncratic, sometimes poignant – interacting with their environments, but I would not go so far as to say that the work is particularly either symbolical or satirical – or attempting to be either. My concerns as a painter have always been with the basic elements and principles of colour, pattern, space and form, using human figures in their environments as a means to such ends. The figures and their containing spaces offer a rich opportunity to exploit these elements, and the pastel medium is a sensuous and textural means for their expression.'

The exhibition opens on 19 February 2010.

To view this exhibition online visit: http://finearts.co.za/gregory-kerr-2.html